‘Before We Were Yours’ : Lisa Wingate
Book Review
History has been witness to the birth of monsters in human form. Many of these monsters have become monstrous owing to ordinary people turning a blind eye to their monstrosities, and allowing them to grow and fester, like a ulcers.
One such monster was Georgia Tann, American child trafficker, and director of a Memphis-based adoption organisation, the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. She was responsible for kidnapping the children of poor people, even babies and infants when their parents were out at work, and selling them to the highest bidder. The orphanage, that she administered, was run like a prison, with physical, mental and sexual abuse within its walls, ‘unwanted’ or ‘troublesome’ kids disappearing and never being heard of again.
‘Before We Were Yours’, by Lisa Wingate, is a 2017 Ballantine Books publication. It is a fictional account, seen and described in the words of, and through the eyes of the eldest of five siblings, of a poor Polish family, who live on a boat. They were kidnapped by Georgia Tann’s hench men, when their parents had gone to the hospital. The children are much in demand, by childless rich couples who are willing to pay a high price, because all of them, except for one, have blonde hair and blue eyes.
The book is a very, very difficult read: for anyone who knows, or has a child, and anyone who is a child: there were several times when I told myself that I would stop reading, but I couldn’t. I took 24 hours to read the book of 342 pages, in between sleeping, eating, exercising, cooking, writing, and taking care of an old relative. That’s how riveting the book is.
Any thing I say about the book, will be a spoiler, so I won’t.
But.
The pace of the book slows a little in the last 30 or so pages. But the book is both a historical testimony, and a well written piece of literature.
Read it to know at first hand, what one ‘human’ being can do to another human being.
A word of warning, though. It can be traumatising.
